


you're doing fine (you're doing well)

by backdoor (symmetrophobic)



Series: with me now (and forever) [1]
Category: Stray Kids (Band)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-12
Updated: 2020-01-12
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:47:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22225882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/symmetrophobic/pseuds/backdoor
Summary: Loving yourselfwas something his friends were experts on – they told him how to do it, to eat and sleep well, to put yourself first, to cut out people from your life that got in the way of that, but somehow Changbin had never really gotten the hang of it.It just seemed so…lonely.
Relationships: Bang Chan & Lee Felix, Lee Felix & Seo Changbin
Series: with me now (and forever) [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1589818
Comments: 19
Kudos: 118





	you're doing fine (you're doing well)

Changbin leans back against the hard seat of the subway, till the back of his head hits the greasy window with a _thunk_.

He knows he looks like a mess right now – alone on the subway at 11:30pm, cologne still crisp on his jacket and black tee, a prettily wrapped bunch of flowers in his right hand, eyes watery and body slumped into the seat like a deflated balloon.

As if it hadn’t been awful enough three days ago when the platinum recording label he’d been working with effectively terminated his contract because he didn’t fit the cookie cutter idol image they were moving towards, his girlfriend decided to break up with him. Today. On their anniversary.

 _Fuck_ , he could write so many songs about this. _Maybe if I had a job,_ Changbin thinks flatly.

This car of the subway is almost empty at this point in time – it’s the last train on a weekday night, after all. Other than a little boy and his father at the priority seats on the far end, and a giggly couple opposite Changbin, he’s alone.

The girl shrieks out another giggle, leaning away from the boy as he tries to steal the drink out of her hand, knapsack and binder almost sliding off her knees. The boy, a clueless, young-looking punk in a high school uniform, is smiling, the dumbstruck, awed kind of smile that guys like him typically wear around girls like her.

Changbin hadn’t had a girlfriend throughout high school, for reasons his limited circle of friends could never understand. He was a chill guy, fun to hang out with, had a dry sense of humour that was funny when he wanted it to be and a standoffish appearance hiding a burning passion for music that, according to his college friends, made the girls weak for him.

But all the same, he was possessed by an inexplicable, quiet fear. It was a crippling feeling he kept hidden, a symmetrical disgust he held at the very core of himself for both who he was and who everyone around him was. A paradoxical spring in the centre of himself that whispered that the people around him weren’t worth his heart and soul, and that he was worth nothing.

He looks over the bouquet in his hand, feeling a tinge of disgust for it and everything it represents, but unable to draw up the strength to do anything dramatic, like throw it out or burn it, or whatever they did in the movies. Maybe that’s why this hadn’t been right from the start, maybe he’d only put effort into it so that his parents would stop hounding him about getting married.

Maybe he’d never really loved her, and she’d felt that.

Maybe that’s why he doesn’t feel so sad now.

The train creaks to a halt, a robotic voice reading out the station name. It takes one second, two, before the girl suddenly looks up, gasping and smacking the boy, as they rush to gather all their things and sprint out the doors before it closes. He can hear their laughter all the way from the escalator going up, leaving trails of dreams and starshine and memories in their wake.

No, Changbin doesn’t feel sad.

He just feels a little old, and very, very alone.

He sighs, a gentle exhale through his nose, leaning back and closing his eyes. His thinks of the dreaded phone call to his parents, who’d be furious about the breakup, who had never wanted him to pursue music in the first place, and the cold, quiet studio apartment waiting for him. It would be so much _easier_ , really, to just-…

A _thud-thud_ makes his eyes fly open, and he blinks, looking over. It’s the little boy and his dad, at the other end of the car – the boy has decided to migrate from the reserved seats, and is now doing an exclusive solo tour of the worn subway cab. He walks unsteadily, thanks to the constant movement of the train, but is managing pretty well for someone with such tiny feet. He climbs down from where he’d been inspecting a poster about giving up your seat to those who need it, and starts venturing down the cab, towards where Changbin is seated.

The train jerks, then, and he wobbles, toppling over onto a seat.

“Felix, be careful,” his father calls warningly. It’s a man in his mid-twenties, probably, dressed fashionably for someone chaperoning a young child – he’s wearing jeans and a black tee, hair dyed a shock of platinum blond. He gives off the vibe of someone in the entertainment industry, an impression that’s reinforced by the way he immediately goes back to his phone after talking to his son, deep in an important-looking conversation.

“Yes,” the little boy – Felix, calls out absently, wandering further towards Changbin, grabbing onto one of the standing poles and swinging around like he’s at a playground.

It’s at this moment that the train decides to jerk again, and Felix, unfortunately angled, flies into the pole, head hitting it with a _thunk_. He squats down, a hand over his forehead, eyes comically wide and teary as he tries to deal with the pain.

Changbin leans forward in concern, then, his eyes catching that of the little boy’s. “You okay there?”

Alarmed, Felix starts waddling at top speed back to his father, jamming himself safely between the man’s knees before he ventures a glance back, one hand still on his forehead.

Changbin snorts fondly, leaning back against the seat. _Kids_.

Of course, it doesn’t take long for the little boy to decide that Changbin isn’t much of a threat, and wander out again. He’s cautious with the pole this time, something that makes Changbin smile. He does a circuit of the cab, before walking back, staring in Changbin’s direction, seemingly fixated on something.

It takes the man a while to realise what it is. It’s the bouquet of flowers abandoned beside him, or more precisely – the pack of strawberry gummies fashionably tied to the centre of it.

 _Oh well. Be a shame to waste the 30,000won I spent on this_. He plucks out the pack of gummies, struggling a bit with the wire tying it down. “Hey there.”

The little boy hugs the pole, grinning shyly from behind it. It’s a far cry from the – what, five minutes ago? When he’d scuttled back away to the safety of his dad. From the look of it, he’s an experienced professional at wheedling snacks out of a multitude of doting noonas and hyungs.

Changbin smiles wearily, raising the pack of gummies. “Do you like strawberry flavour?”

The boy wanders up, leaning against the seat beside Changbin, big eyes gleaming in triumph as he claims the gummies.

“Can you do something first though?” Changbin leans over, pointing at the man at the end of the cab. “You need to ask your dad for permission first, okay?”

Felix hurries off, gummies clutched to his chest like a trophy. There’s an inaudible, rapid-fire conversation between him and his father after that, which, by the sound of it, isn’t entirely in Korean. The man looks up, confused, phone tilted away for a moment, and Changbin smiles, bowing slightly where he’s seated.

 _Thank you_ , the man mouths sheepishly, before saying something to Felix again, and resuming the conversation on his phone.

Changbin expects the boy to sit beside his father, then. Instead, the kid comes barrelling back, doing a messy bow. “Thank you for the gummies.”

 _Ah, his dad probably asked him to say that_. “You’re very welcome.”

Felix extends the pack, looking up at Changbin through his big eyes. “Can you help me open it?”

Once again, Changbin visualises the army of adoring aunts and uncles this kid probably has, and chuckles. “Sure.”

He takes the packet, fiddling with the brightly coloured packaging, and Felix clambers onto the seat next to him, feet swinging in anticipation as he watches his prize.

Finally, Changbin gets the packet open without spilling any sweets, and hands it over to Felix, who immediately pops one into his mouth.

“What’s your name?” Changbin decides to ask, though he already knows. What the heck, he’s got about fifteen minutes till his stop anyway, and nothing to lose. “I’m Seo Changbin.”

“My name is Kim Felix,” the boy says brightly, mood significantly improved with the sweets. “I am four-and-a-half years old.”

 _I’ve never heard an accent like that before._ Maybe he was right about them being foreigners. “Why are you out so late, Felix?”

“Daddy met his friends tonight, but, but Appa couldn’t come,” Felix is frowning, trying to put the words together. “Appa was sick. He has flu.”

“Your daddy didn’t drive?” Changbin raises a brow. Long public transport journeys with kids are a nightmare in itself, much less this late at night, and like he said before, judging by what Felix and his dad were wearing, the family didn’t exactly look _poor_.

“Appa lent the car. Lia noona needed to move her house,” Felix says knowingly, eating another gummy. Absently, Changbin wonders if he should be limiting the amount the boy was eating.

“Ah. That’s very nice of him.”

“Why do you have flowers?” Felix asks, without missing a beat.

 _Ah._ The man winces, looking at the bouquet, tulip petals now slightly crumpled from when he’d pulled out the gummies. “They were for my girlfriend.”

“What’s a girlfriend?”

Changbin’s unable to hold back a snort. _How do you explain that to a kid?_ “You know how your Appa and Daddy love each other and live together in your home with you, Felix? I lov-…I’m supposed to love my girlfriend like that, too.”

“Are you going to give it to her when you reach your home?” Felix asks politely, sounding a bit bored.

Changbin lets out a shaky breath, sinking slightly in his seat. “No. We broke up, Felix.”

Felix eats another gummy. “What does broke up mean?”

The man looks over at him, pulling a tired smile on. “It’s like – like one day, if your Appa stops loving your Daddy, and he packs up all his things and goes away, and you don’t see him anymore.”

That makes Felix pause for a while. “Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why did Appa leave?”

Changbin realises he could be seriously warping one impressionable little boy’s view of his parents’ probably smooth-sailing and loving relationship, and changes tack. “It’s not going to happen,” he reassures the child. “Don’t worry. Your Appa and Daddy probably really love each other a lot.”

Felix nods seriously, back to eating his sweets. “How do you know?”

“What?”

“When you love someone a lot?”

Changbin’s quiet for a moment. For a moment, the misery returns, creeping up into his soul from the shadows pouring into the train.

“I don’t know,” he says.

The dread returns in spades, and he feels really fucking stupid for a while, sitting here all by himself in a train cab, probably freaking out a small child, unemployed and alone and surrounded by people who’ll never have the time to understand what’s going on in his head.

 _I’m not sure what you’re looking for, oppa_ , his girlfriend had said a couple of hours earlier, like she was reading straight out of a B-grade teen crush breakup novel. _I hope you find it one day._

How was he supposed to love anyone when he couldn’t even love himself?

“My daddy made a song about love.”

Changbin inhales, rubbing a knuckle into his temple.

“What?”

“He makes songs. I listened to the songs tonight,” Felix says, wiping his sticky fingers on his pants, little head bopping to a song only he can hear inside his head. “He told Younghyun-samcheon that it’s a song about love.”

“That’s nice,” the man says tightly, still trying to shake his thoughts out of his head. “What does it sound like?”

Felix swallows his gummy, and opens his mouth, singing surprisingly readily. “ _You’re doing well, you’re doing well. You gotta take your time, you can do it, you’re doing just fine._ ”

He fumbles across some of the words, but it doesn’t stop Changbin from recognising the song immediately, glancing sharply at the man seated across the cab, still on the phone. _That’s Bang Chan. What the hell, his dad is Bang Christopher Chan? As in, JYP Entertainment’s biggest new producer?_

Even back when he was just a rookie, before he started rising up in his former company, he’d always listened to Chan’s music, penned his name down on the bucket list of artists he wanted to collaborate with one day. A week ago, he would’ve leapt at this crazy coincidence of an opportunity at the hopes of scoring a feature on one of Chan’s tracks.

But that was then, and this is now. And now, Changbin’s kind of at the lowest point of his life. He doesn’t even know if he wants to do music anymore.

He doesn’t know if he wants to do anything anymore.

“That’s-…that’s a nice song,” he says, trying to ignore the storm in his head right now, asking a question on autopilot. “What is it about?”

Felix straightens up importantly. “Daddy says,” he chews on another gummy, looking very focused. “When he was young like me, people always told him to love himself, but he didn’t know what it means,” the little boy slips in and out of English when he talks, so naturally that Changbin wonders if he even realises he’s doing it. “But then, he says, he became friends with Jisung-samcheon, and Appa, and Jihyo-noona, and when he loves them, he learnt how to love himself too. So he made the song. ‘Cos he wants to love everyone.”

Changbin sits there for a moment, quietened. “That’s nice.”

Strangely, the thought of it doesn’t isolate him as much as it comforts him. _Loving yourself_ was something his friends in the industry were experts on – they told him how to do it, to eat and sleep well, to put yourself first, to cut out people from your life that got in the way of that, but somehow Changbin had never really gotten the hang of it.

It just seemed so…lonely.

The train rolls on, the ground below glowing orange with the streetlamps, and Changbin looks up when the other man – _Bang Chan_ , stands and walks over, tucking his phone back in his pocket.

Immediately, Felix stands, gummy pack in one hand, running over with a giggle. Changbin finds himself smiling as the other man sweeps the little boy off the floor, laughing as he does so, pressing a big kiss on his cheek that Felix immediately tries to wipe away on the man’s jacket.

“I’m so sorry, thank you so much for taking care of him while I was on the phone,” Chan sounds genuinely apologetic, before turning to Felix, now trying to stuff as many gummies as he can into his mouth before his father can take the packet away. “Felix, you didn’t bother the nice hyung too much, right?”

“ _Chiop chiop chiop,_ ” chews Felix busily. Chan wrestles the pack away from him.

“No problem. It was nice talking to him,” Changbin smiles wryly.

“I’m Bang Chan, by the way,” Chan sits down next to him, balancing Felix on his lap, now visibly upset that his sweets are gone. “Late night?”

“I’m Seo Changbin,” Changbin introduces himself, _might as well, not like he knows who I am anyway._ “And yeah, you could say that. I’m just glad the train runs this late.”

But Chan’s looking at him funny now, brow creasing momentarily, before his face breaks out into a smile. “Wait, as in, _Seo Changbin?_ Like, _SpearB?_ ”

Changbin opens his mouth, closes it, then opens it again. _What?_ “Uhm. Yeah. How’d you-…you’ve heard my songs?”

“Yeah, of course, who hasn’t?” Chan says enthusiastically, while bouncing a sulky Felix on his knee. “You’ve charted tons of times. Are you working on a new album now?”

 _Holy shit, Bang Chan listens to my songs_ , Changbin thinks, brain short circuiting. Then _, holy shit, I’m going to have to tell Bang Chan I got fired._

“I’m, uh, not with the company anymore,” the younger man says stiffly. “So I guess not.”

“Oh, aw man,” Chan says sympathetically. The train rolls to a clean halt then, and he gathers Felix closer. “Hey, I know this is pretty much out of the blue, and you’ve probably got your own plans, but,” he struggles with his bag for a moment, before extricating a black card, slightly crumpled around the edges. “This is my business card! Hit me up if you ever want to do a collaboration or anything.”

Changbin stares at the outstretched card for a moment, not quite believing what’s going on.

“It’s crazy that we got to meet like this,” Chan laughs. “Feels a little like fate, doesn’t it?”

The younger man laughs weakly, hoping his hands aren’t shaking too much when he takes the card. “Yeah-…I mean, _yes_ , thank you, that sounds amazing, you have no idea.”

“It’d be great to work with you,” Chan beams, standing up, Felix still on his arm. “This is my stop, I gotta go, but I hope I’ll hear from you soon! Say bye-bye, Felix. And thank him for the sweets.”

“Bye bye~” Felix singsongs, waving. Changbin smiles, waving once, watching the two of them as they head out the door opposite and towards the stairs.

Then he glances back at the name card as the train doors close, smiling to himself, before closing his eyes, holding the card tight.

Maybe things are going to be okay, after all.

**Author's Note:**

> this probably wasn't what yall were expecting for the second instalment to the woochanlix family au but i can assure you guys that we will be returning to our scheduled programme of woojin soon enough have no fear!! this was the second instalment i had planned out for this au! it was actually supposed to come out before "goodnight stars (goodnight moon)" but since i skipped the first instalment, that one was posted first hehe ;u; 
> 
> there isn't enough cute platonic changlix out there and angel sought to be the change she wanted to see in the world
> 
> so yes!! thank you for reading!! spoiler alert: changbin joins jyp, is inducted into felix's league of adoring hyungs and noonas, and now i can't wait to write uncles binsung vying for babylix's attention with snacks and toys
> 
> kudos and comments will help me write and give me strength!! ;u; thank you for all your comments on the first fic of the series hehe, they really really helped me so much T_T hope you guys have a great day~
> 
> talk with me pls! ;u;   
>  personal twt: @goldengyeom   
>  writing twt: @symmetrophobic (locked for qrts but i will accept your follow!!) ೕ(•̀ᴗ•́) 


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